Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) and many other natural philosophers in the first half of the seventeenth century argued in favor of the corpuscular theory of matter on philosophical grounds, as well as by appealing to empirical evidence.

Although he does not fully abandon substantial forms, Sennert most fully develops a corpuscular theory of matter based on chymical experiments to undermine the Aristotelian theory of mixtures as ruling out the persistence of atoms or other particulate structures.

The fact that mathematics has replaced Latin today as the scientific language par excellence might suggest that the latter is incapable of expressing the new realities perceived during the scientific revolution, but the situation is more complicated than this: Boyle, for example, received the initial inspiration for his corpuscular theory from the most Latinate philosopher of his day, Gassendi, who created the term itself in Latin.

He introduces the concept of representational spaces to describe generic theories such as the corpuscular theory and the wave theory of light, as a substitute for Kuhn's concept of paradigm, which he finds rather vague and subjective.

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